Madness in Seventeenth-Century Autobiography (Early Modern History: Society and Culture) - Hardcover

Hodgkin, Katharine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1403917655 ISBN 13: 9781403917652

Publisher: AIAA, 2007

Synopsis

Many early modern writers left accounts of their spiritual sufferings and convictions which deal in extremes of emotion and behavior--some identified by their contemporaries as mad, to be treated with medication, counseling, and confinement. Their writings give us a window into the hidden world of early modern madness from the point of view of the mad. How is madness experienced and treated, and how can it be recorded? How do religion, gender, and class inflect the processes of diagnosis and treatment? And what insights can the stories these writers tell give us into early modern culture?

About this title

Review:

'...a welcome, thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of the cultural history of madness...' - Elena Carrera Reviews in History

Synopsis:

What did it mean to be mad in seventeenth-century England? This book uses autobiographical accounts of mental disorder to explore the ways madness was identified and experienced from the inside. Looking at contemporary ideas about mental illness alongside a range of spiritual autobiographies from the period, it asks how certain people came to be defined as insane, and what we can learn from the accounts they wrote. These narratives, with their vivid and immediate descriptions of anxieties, delusions and desires, illuminate not only madness in early modern culture, but also sanity, and demonstrate the fragility of the boundary between the two.

About this edition

• Publisher: AIAA
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1403917655
• ISBN 13: 9781403917652
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 276